Impressions by Doris on the Chinese Christmas card
inscription posted in issue 3118.

My Ego is a Condemned Stucture

It thinks it is the most majestic building in the
neighborhood,

Though observers know it is the worst eyesore.

Will you help me tear this thing
down?

Will you remind me that emptiness is a beautiful lot in which to
grow beingness?

Let wild nature take
over

As the space called me is
lived.

Call the demolition
crew!

I am ready to be
annihilated.

Shannon Brophy

Charlie Hayes

What Are You? What Are You NOT?

Are you aware? Is there anything wrong with that awareness? This - Empty
Awareness arising as Aliveness - is what You are. This Alive Awareness is not a
concept and not an experience. What you are is non-conceptual, always fresh,
Presence-Awareness, paradoxically Empty yet Full, Nothing arising as Everything.
Look at the mind and all you find is a few thoughts, feelings, and perceptions
coming and going in this No Thing of Being-Awareness. Do you find a person in
the mind? No. Only this space of being - a pure and empty knowing.

Just This and Nothing Else

YOU are NOT a knower or thinker, NOT an experiencer or a separate entity at
all. You are this Unchanging Presence, in which there appears the presence of
"being present" in the waking state and the presence of "being absent" in deep
sleep. Obviously, in deep sleep the body is "being lived", as the heart beats,
cells are born and others die, the lungs are breathed etc. Not as obviously
perhaps, the exact same being-lived happens in dreaming and waking states. The
afterthought of an I that is a doer breathing or thinking is nothing but a
passing fancy. Seeing that a thought of an I is NOT who you are is true
Self-Knowledge. That's all there is to "get".

One of my
chinese students in China give me a Christmas card at Christmas past. On one
side she had written these words presumably copied from some text. I just
wondered if you had heard these words before or thought they might be of
interest/relevance. (Strange christmas card verse I thought
)

"Happiness is accompanied by sorrow and it would turn sunny after
rain as well. If rain remains after rain and sorrow remains after sorrow,
please take these farewells easy and turn to smilingly look for yourself who
is never to appear."

Dear Jerry,

I never heard
of these words, but because they moved me, I decided to share my
impressions.

That which appears, “the two in One” (subject and
experienced objects) are farewells in that they come
and go.Whether happiness follows sorrow, or sorrow follows sorrow, and
whether sunshine follows rain, or rain follows rain, it doesn’t really matter,
it’s all the same... coming from, and returning to the unborn
Mind.

In a dialogue between Michael Harner and Jack Kornfield about
Buddhism and Shamanism.Michael asks Jack, What gets reincarnated? Jack
pauses for a moment and then says, No-thing.